I bumped into this word and my first thought was: Gosh!! I have so many things to learn. So, here it is. I wouldn’t dare not sharing it with you.
“Ditto”, what a strange word to be used in English!. In fact, you can use so many other expressions with the same meaning as Ditto , that this must have been the reason why I’ve never felt the need to use it.
But let’s not ramble and get to the point, the point being the meaning of this word .
You use it ,informally, to agree with what someone has just said.
A: What a nice teacher! B: Ditto
Or as stated in the cartoon to avoid repetition.
Tag Archives: writing
A Man’s Best Friend
Sent by Maria Pardo
A species of animals I’m interested in are dogs.I love all kinds of dogs. When I go out and meet a dog we both usually connect immediately. Dogs don’t speak but we look at each other and we communicate just by means of a look . I prefer dogs to cats. Cats are usually selfish and dogs are very generous. When a family moves, cats prefer to stay at the old house whereas dogs prefer to leave with the family.
Sometimes we can see homeless people in the cities with the only company of a dog. This animal never abandons his owner even if the owner has got nothing, not even food. They are absolutely faithful. People say that the dog is a man’s best friend and I completely agree with that. They help people that feel very isolated especially the elderly and sick . I totally disagree with people who abandon animals mainly in summer when they go on holidays.
I have had four dogs in my life. The last one was Pinky. I adored him. He wasn’t a pedigree animal but he was for me the most beautiful animal in the world. He had a lot of white fur and a silky coat. He was small and had enormous brown eyes. He was slow and a little bit quiet. When someone arrived home, Pinky used to bark with strength to let us know and used to move his tail.
Unfortunately, Pinky died last year in July because of his age. He was thirteen years old.
Confusing Words
Here is a nice tool I have found which might help you when doing homework.
Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused ormisused.
Some of these words are homonyms (words that sound alike but are spelled differently) and some are just commonly confused such as “affect/effect”
Improving your writing skills
You know that I have been for some time now trying to improve your written work making you aware of the fact that you always tend to use the same simplistic words when you write, even though we both know that you have a wider range of vocabulary. So why not use it? Look at this text and try to replace the verbs “say” and “look” with some others.
Click here when you finish to see my suggestions.
“Watch out” ! I said at the top of my voice; but it was already too late. Jim and I both stood there looking at the cyclist flying off his bike and hitting the enormous hole in the road. “Is he hurt?” Jim said quietly, trembling with fear. “I don’t know” I said softly. At that moment the young man slowly lifted his head and looked at us in confusion. “What happened?” he said, in pain. “Where am I?”
Here’s another one. This time replace the words underlined to make it more interesting to the reader. Click here when you finish to see my suggestions.
It was a nice sunny morning when we set off on our journey. The sky looked very blue with only a few small clouds on the distant horizon. The ship we travelled on was big and had good cabins. We must have been halfway there when I was roused from my nap by a bad scream. It took me a while to come to my senses, but then I saw a small woman in front of me, looking very scared.
And now an entertaining task online that shows you how you can develop a simple sentence like ‘I made tea.’ into a detailed text. Go to the website: http://www.telescopictext.com/. You will see the sentence with shaded words, click ing on a shaded you’ll see that part of the sentence expand. Read the new sentence and then choose another part to click on
Homework: Create your own detailed sentences from one of these:
– I went to the beach.
– I saw a film
Once you have finished your sentence you can post it in the comments below and I’ll publish it.
Mobile phone: friend or enemy?
Sent by Mario Peláez Fdez
Everybody knows that mobile phones have changed our society, making our communication faster, but, has it become better?
It’s true that we’ve modified our communication habits, because now we can talk with anyone, no matter where he/se is, but: Do we know the importance of communication? Or do we just do it becauseit’s a habit, a routine? I don’t mean mobile phones are completely bad for us: They help us to keep in touch with our friends and to ask for help in case of danger, and they help other people to find us if there’s an emergency.
But, on the other hand, some people are starting to substitute the face-to-face communication with the mobile phone communication. I mean, they’re trying to “mobilize” our communication. For example: teenager couples send each other, on average, more than fifteen text messages per day! Are we going crazy? It’s the same kind of communication that we should eliminate between friends. A boy or a girl comes from high school. He/She’s going to meet his/her friends half an hour later, but she’s texting all his/her friends to ask them if they have any interesting thing to tell him/her!
As I see it, we aren’t caring enough about how we relate to each other . We’re addicted to our mobile phones, because we think we can’t live without them 
If you don’t believe me, ask a teenager about what he/she prefers: a week without his/her mobile phone or a weekend without going out. I think most of the teenagers would say that they prefer the second option (I wouldn’t, but I think most of the teenagers would)
However, there’s something that I consider a very important advantage about mobile phones: nowadays, most of the mobile phones have got a camera and a MP3 player on them. I think that it’s an advantage because it’s a way to keep your music with you at all times and to take photos wherever and whenever you want.
So, if you ask me, I think that mobile phones are a great product, but we should be careful, because we mustn’t be mobile phone addicts